


Enough Courage

by TheFictionFairy



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awesome Karen Page, F/M, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Loss of Trust, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 19:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8933887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFictionFairy/pseuds/TheFictionFairy
Summary: It is said that it is a greater compliment to be trusted than to be loved.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AllisonDiamond](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllisonDiamond/gifts).



Karen stares at the mask in Matt’s hands and she instantly _knows_. All the scrapes and bruises and brush-offs suddenly making perfect, painful sense – the truth crystalizing in her mind in an instant, leaving her breath frozen in her lungs. 

She stands there staring for a long moment, and she sees the guarded anticipation on Matt’s – had she ever really thought of it as _open_ and _honest_? – face, his jaw clenching. He is clearly waiting for some kind of response to the grenade he has just thrown at her feet. Karen doesn’t know what he wants her to say. Karen doesn’t know what _she_ wants to say. After everything they’ve been through together, with Foggy and Ben and Frank and Fisk, how can The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen possibly squeeze into the fragile space between them? 

Karen takes a breath to steady herself and tries to ignore that it is shakier than she would like. “Why?” she asks as steadily as she can, lifting her eyes once again from the mask to stare at his face. She begs herself to be calm. Falling apart will do nothing to help the situation. 

Matt takes a breath of his own and lifts his chin. _Stubborn, always stubborn_. “Because this city needed–,” 

“No, Matt,” Karen cuts him off, anger edging her voice. She doesn’t need a speech. Karen had believed in the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen from the very beginning. Matt knew that. She’d told him – oh, God, she’d told _him_. He’d been right there in front of her, so many times, and she had argued against Matt in the Devil’s defense. Fuck. _Fuck_. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

He swallows, and she sees his expression close off. The next part seems rehearsed – repeated so often that the words have lost both the logic and the feeling behind them. “I was protecting you.” And – God help her – it sounds like he really believes that. 

Karen remembers a warehouse and a table and a gun in her hand, and she explodes. 

“Protecting me?” Karen spits back at him, disgusted and angry and hurt and a thousand other things she can’t focus on right now. She remembers the way the blood has seeped out to stain the white shirt. “How? Explain it to me, Matt! How was keeping me oblivious supposed to _protect_ me?” 

“I was–,” he starts, but no, she’s too angry to listen, so she decides her question was rhetorical and interrupts him again. 

“Do you think I am a child?” 

He stutters, taken aback, and visibly has to gather himself before answering. “Of course not.” 

“Then why do you seem to think I can’t take care of myself?” 

Matt’s expression shutters closed again, and his jaw clenches, but his voice is even. “It wasn’t that. It was about not getting you in over your head. There are things about this city that you’re not equipped to deal with. Darkness. Danger. Violence.” 

_‘Do you really think this is the first time I’ve shot someone?’_  

“Matt,” Karen nearly sobs, but it comes out as a gasp instead. “Matt, on the night we met–” she closes her eyes and tries not to feel the sticky grit of Daniel Fisher’s blood drying on her hands, “I woke up next to a mutilated _corpse_. I was already in over my head.” 

Matt looks down, thumb stroking the mask still clenched in his now white-knuckled grip, and Karen wonders if his blindness was just one more lie told ‘for her own good.’ The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen certainly hadn’t moved like a blind man. But she decides she doesn’t care right now. She’s done. The well of anger that has sustained her runs dry and suddenly all Karen wants is a hot shower and her bed and possibly (definitely) a strong drink. 

Karen gathers up her purse and her courage and strides toward the door, pausing only for a moment at Matt’s side as she passes. She does not look at him. 

“It’s not up to you to decide what I get into,” she tells him, voice thin and so, so tired. “But it would’ve been nice if you had actually been there to help me out.” 

If he had been someone else, Karen would have sworn she could feel him watch her as she left.

* * *

 

He doesn’t call her. It’s been weeks, and Karen hasn’t heard a single word from the no-longer-so-mysterious Matt Murdock. She thought this was what she wanted. She was so _angry_. 

But eventually, being angry just makes her tired. 

The Devil remains active. And Karen tries not to care – doesn’t go snooping on those superhero fansites that have popped up all over the place since the Incident, trying to keep track of the latest sightings – but she works at a news agency now. It’s very hard to ignore someone so newsworthy.

 But then Karen catches the scent of a new story – a high-class call girl ring, catering to the rich and powerful, fed by brutal human trafficking – and suddenly she’s diving in over her head again, focused and relentless and sure. The police don’t have much to go off of – a girl’s corpse in the river, drugged and strangled in a thousand-dollar dress, and a bellhop at a ritzy hotel who had recanted his incriminating statement almost as soon as he’d given it. Karen is pretty sure she has enough to catch the actual killer, the girl’s client for the night Charles Campbell, but is floundering on finding his connections to the people in charge of the ring. 

Karen has finally stopped counting the days since she last saw him that the envelope comes. It appears on her coffee table at home one morning – it hadn’t been there when she went to bed, and she spends the next twenty minutes sweeping her apartment for intruders, gun in hand. 

Inside the unassuming envelope are pictures – grainy and distant, but clear enough. A bunch of white-collar men at a party of some sort, up on a penthouse terrace, surrounded by drinks and food and scantily-clad girls. Karen recognizes at least three of the men’s faces, and the date on the pictures matches a rather large withdrawal Campbell made from his account. Karen bets that if she can find similar big purchases for the others if she puts her mind to it.  

* * *

 

It takes time. Weeks become months, and the going is slow and frustrating – two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes, when Karen isn’t sure how to get what she needs, it will appear for her. Sometimes, her files will go missing for a day or two and be returned in the night, notes and pictures and questions added in. Still, she’s never quite as stuck as she used to be, and the Devil’s activity has a suspicious habit of spiking just as her investigation starts to accelerate. 

It’s a bit like having a pen-pal that she refuses to openly acknowledge. Karen is starting to think she works better with a silent sounding board, anyway. 

But in the end it’s worth it. After the bust happens and the arrests are made and the story breaks, Karen finds a moment to herself. She has a black eye, a split lip, and a strained wrist, but she also has had the satisfaction of being there just as SWAT raided the compound – of seeing with her own eyes the criminals tackled to the ground and carted off in handcuffs. Karen knows she did a good thing, and she feels warm and proud and just a bit viciously victorious. 

She also knows that the Devil – _Matt_ – has been shadowing her every step of the way, nudging and informing and protecting, but by all appearances following her lead. It doesn’t feel quite like partnership – they had never spoken directly – but it echoed oddly close to a feeling of teamwork. Close enough that Karen does something she hasn’t even considered in months. 

Karen calls Matt. She initially felt the desire to text, but that just seemed rude, even with the text-to-voice program she knows Matt has on his phone. 

He answers on the third ring. 

“Hi, Karen.” Matt’s greeting whooshes toward her as if he’s been holding his breath. 

Karen very carefully continues to pack away the files in front of her, trying to pretend this is one of those normal after-case check-ins that they would have back at Nelson and Murdock. “I didn’t realize photography was one of your many talents,” she says, polite and a bit stiff, because old wounds may have scabbed over, but they have not entirely healed. 

“Yeah, well, it’s just point and click. Even a blind guy’s gotta get lucky sometimes.” Matt gives the same self-deprecating chuckle that she’s heard a hundred times before, and something in her chest warms even further. 

The line is silent for a minute, neither of them quite sure how to bridge the gap. 

“So I know we’ve both been busy lately,” Karen forces a laugh, pretending that this is a normal conversation between good friends, “and, um. Thank you. For all your help.” She takes a shaky breath and plows on before he can begin to speak, her voice bright and thin and hopeful, “But my schedule just cleared up a bit. So. Uh. Do you have anything going on right now that you might need help with?” 

She can hear how fragile she sounds and she kind of hates that she’s testing him right now. But she needs to know. Karen has tasted what it’s like to be trusted – truly trusted, _relied upon_ – in this, but she also knows that she kind of forced his hand this time, rushing in and not caring if he followed. 

Karen needs to know if he’ll _choose_ her. 

Another silence stretches between them. She’s afraid to move, to breathe, to do anything that might shatter the tentative hope rising in her chest. 

“I might have something you can help me look over. If you want,” Matt says finally, and Karen can hear the hope in his voice. 

And Karen smiles because she _knows_. 

* * *

 

_“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.” – Maya Angelou_


End file.
